Broadcast transmission has been a staple in communication and reaching a large number of people for many years. In the United States alone, there a hundreds of radio and television broadcasters transmitting modulated signals, such as amplitude modulation (AM) signals, frequency modulation (FM) signals, very high frequency (VHF) signals, and ultra high frequency (UHF) signals for transmission of audio and/or video content. Many different types of devices exist that can receive analog audio signals, such as an FM signal, and produce music and/or other audio content through a speaker. Examples of such terminal devices include radios, computers, and cellular telephones. Today, terminal devices allow users the ability to record a broadcast analog transmission that is received by the terminal device.
A Digital transmission often includes information regarding the transmission as such is necessary for the receiver device to be able to properly process the incoming digital data. This information is often referred to as metadata. Typically, metadata for digital music includes the artist and title of the song. However, for analog transmissions, information about the analog transmission is not sent in parallel with the analog transmission itself. Typically, if any information regarding an analog transmission is associated with the analog transmission, it is done upon arrival at the receiver device and/or manually by a user. FIGS. 1A and 1B show two systems that are used today to associate information about an audio entity, such as a song, with the actual entity.
FIG. 1A illustrates a receiver system where a user must enter any metadata for association with an audio entity by hand. As shown, an analog FM transmission is transmitted to an analog FM receiver 120. Analog FM receiver processes the analog FM signal 110 and sends the signal to a recorder 130. Recorder 130 stores the analog FM signal 110 in some type of storage medium. Metadata insertion engine 140 may be a program that allows a user to enter title information or artist information about the stored analog FM signal. A user may have heard of the particular song before and knows the artist that recorded it. The manually entered metadata can then be associated with the analog FM signal and sent to an audio player or stored in some type of storage medium. As illustrated in FIG. 1B, recorder 130 may access a memory space that contains stored metadata 145. In such a case, the system can associate metadata information, such as the song title or artist, with the analog FM signal and send to an audio player or store in some type of storage medium 150. In either case, any information that corresponds to the transmitted analog FM signal 110 is generated and associated by the terminal device. If there is no stored metadata 145 or manual entry of metadata by a metadata insertion engine, a user can not readily determine the song tile or artist name without listening to the recorded song. In conventional systems, recordings from an analog source do not have associated metadata.